On fascism

Mussolini truppe Etiopia, Italy. Photo (CC) https://renopenrose.getarchive.ne

In the fall of 1922, Engelbert Besednjak, a young Slovenian lawyer and journalist from Gorizia, published an analysis of fascism, a movement that had just seized power in Italy. His article was published in the monthly magazine Social Thought (Socialna misel, vol. I, no. 11/12), edited in Ljubljana by the Christian-socialist thinker Andrej Gosar. Besednjak (1894-1968), a member of the Slovenian minority in the newly annexed regions of Italy, was an eyewitness to the rise of fascism and a victim of fascist intimidation. However, as he stressed in a footnote, his article was intended to be “an objective analysis of the movement without subjective value judgments”. A political science analysis, as we would say today. He sought to understand fascism in terms of its role in Italian society, beyond its peripheral manifestations along the “eastern border”. The result was one of the most insightful contemporary analyses of fascism that has not lost its relevance. To mark the centennial of Fascism’s rise to power, the magazine Razpotja, published in Nova Gorica, decided to republish the article. 

In April 1924, in the last multi-party elections in Italy before the Second World War, Besednjak was elected to the Chamber of Deputies on a joint list of the Slovenian, Croatian and German minorities. Here he made a name for himself as an advocate of minority rights: on several occasions he clashed verbally with Mussolini himself. In 1929, he went into exile to Vienna, where he worked at the Congress of European National Minorities. After the Anschluss, he moved to Belgrade, where he remained during the war. In 1950, he moved to Trieste, where he became an active member of the Slovenian Christian Social Union (Slovenska krščansko-socialna zveza) and sought to improve the relations between socialist Yugoslavia and the non-communist wing of the Slovenian minority in the Free Territory of Trieste, and later in Italy. 

In November 2024 the Municipal Council of Gorizia, led by a centre-right coalition, rejected a petition to strip Mussolini of the title of honorary citizen of Gorizia, granted in 1924. As the twin towns of Nova Gorica (Slovenia) and Gorizia (Italy) share the title of European Capital of Culture for 2025, the controversial decision offers a glimpse on the current state of public discourse in Europe, and shows that understanding the dynamics of the rise of fascism is more relevant than ever. 

Introduction by Luka Lisjak Gabrijelčič, Editor of the Slovenian journal Razpotja 

 Understanding fascism 

The victory of the Fascist Party in Italy has attracted the attention of all of Europe. Any country that enters into relations with Italy today is in fact entering into relations with the Fascist Party, the unlimited and total ruler of the country. Italian foreign and domestic, economic and social policy is dictated in every detail by Fascism and its program. Anyone who wants to understand today’s Italy should understand fascism. Therefore, it seems to us appropriate and necessary to talk about the origins, conceptual content and goals of the fascist movement. 

Fascism emerged when Italian socialism was at the height of its development. It was born in 1919, when the Italian Socialist Party had more than 150 deputies [out of 508], and all of Europe awaited the communist revolution in Italy. The socialists were the rulers of the street, threatening the existing state with constant strikes, frightening all parties opposed to them, breaking up their meetings, stifling their organizational freedom, forcing all workers to join unions en masse, and using rather brutal means to do so. Whoever was not with them was a capitalist and subjected to the most severe pressure.  

The government was in an indescribable dilemma, it didn’t know how to behave on both the left and the right, it appeased the socialists with various concessions and gave in to their demands. The socialists forced the government to halt its march into Albania as an armed rebellion broke out in Ancona1. In the fall of 1919, revolutionary metal workers occupied the factories, sacked the directors and owners and took the plants into their own hands. The state organization seemed close to collapse at any moment. This was all the more likely because the government could no longer rely on the military, and even the armour manufacturers refused to cooperate.  

There was no salvation anywhere, the law no longer applied, the parliament had no power. Officers who appeared on the street in uniform were robbed and beaten by the crowd, their medals ripped from their chests. When they turned to the government for help, the government advised them to change into bourgeois clothes. Displaying the Italian national colours at the time was dangerous. The exchange rate of the lira was plummeting, and Italy’s prestige on the international stage was shrinking rapidly.  

First appearance 

By this time, resistance had emerged in the ranks of nationalist youth. The bourgeois intellectuals, who had previously gone to war with enthusiasm, believed that Italy was headed for destruction. The fruits of victory were lost, all the sacrifices were in vain, the war was pointless. The sons of the bourgeoisie formed militant alliances (Fascio di combattimento). As the government remained unmoved, they began to fight for their demands on their own. They confronted the socialists with guns and clubs. All over Italy, workers’ homes were set on fire, the printing presses of socialist newspapers crumbled into dust, there were casualties on the roads. There was practically no province in the country where the blood of fascists and communists was not shed. 

The outcome of the fascists at this time was met with much sympathy in Italy. The fears of the Socialist Party were overcome, the non-communist workers breathed a sigh of relief and the parties began to operate and organize freely again. In public sympathy, the fascist movement found terrific moral support. Material aid was provided to the fascists from three directions. First of all, they had the support of the high-ranking military elite, which did not want to accept a powerless government, and even thought at the time of a military dictatorship. The generals and officers were well aware that a workers’ revolution would overthrow and destroy everything superior in the army. Their survival was at stake and the future was dark. So, the officers provided the fascists with firearms, bombs and trucks. 

The fascists received help of a different kind from the government. [Giovanni] Giolitti (a pragmatic liberal politician and a major player in Italian politics in the decades leading up to the First World War) saw the ground collapse beneath his feet as the state apparatus crumbled more and more. He did not know how to help himself. The emergence of the fascists was very welcome to him. To destroy the revolution, he gave secret orders to the armed forces and prefects to leave the fascists alone. The fascists were thus safe from this side. This was support of inestimable value. 

Most valuable, however, was the help of the capitalists. The proletarian revolution threatened not only the political system, but the entire social fabric of Italy. The economic power of industrialists and capitalists coming from the landed gentry was crumbling. The socialization of industry was being resisted and land reform promised to expropriate all landowners. A difficult and dark future lay ahead for the ruling classes. The government could not and did not know how to protect their property. When fascism arrived, the owning classes saw in it their saviour. So they blissfully approached fascism and offered it their help. They wanted to use the movement, which had started from idealistic motives, for their own economic purposes. They reached deep into their pockets and overnight fascism gained rich support. The ruling classes preferred it all the more because they benefited directly from it. Every strike that the fascists suppressed by force brought the capitalists hundreds of thousands [of lire in profit].  

Thus, the wages of the workers did not have to be raised, while the money saved was shared between businessmen and fascists. This was a time when fascism seemed to be a bastion of capitalism. In Italy, strikes suddenly stopped, entrepreneurs were emboldened and spoke with great confidence. Everything pointed to the fact that fascism would fill capitalist liberalism with young forces, unite with it and completely renew it. 

Independence 

It happened differently, however. The fascists unscrupulously accepted the help of the capitalists but used their power for their own ends. It soon became apparent that the fascists were shaking off the influence of their supporters, that they were growing beyond their strength. They broke out of the grip of the capitalists and began to attack the government with increasing vigour. Instead of killing the capitalists outright, they threw themselves into organizing the workers and peasants. They became serious rivals of the Socialist Party. As soon as they set fire to the workers’ halls, they immediately invited workers to join their trade unions. Newspapers increasingly reported that whole sections of workers were defecting to the Fascist Party. It wasn’t long before the first fascist-led strikes took place. The capitalists were stunned and could not stop it. The fascist strike was always effective because the armed fascist troops were behind it. 

The fact that workers defected en masse to fascism had a fourfold reason. First, the Italian Socialist Party began to split in two. First, the socialists split into communists and socialists, and then the socialists split into two more parties! Today, the former Socialist Party in Italy is split into three separate parties. Internal struggles and splits completely confused the workers, took away their self-confidence, the proletariat lost faith in its previous organizations. This mood of the workers was exploited by the fascists for their own purposes. Moreover, it should not be forgotten that the socialist and communist organizations found themselves in this situation because fascism prevented them from carrying out any successful strike. The worker believed that he was deprived of the protection of his organization. On the other hand, fascism defended him with the greatest energy. It is also very important that Mussolini came from the Socialist Party. Indeed, he was one of the most revolutionary leaders of the Italian labour movement until the World War! The chief secretary of the Fascist Party, Michele Bianchi, was also a socialist. In general, the most influential leaders of fascism were disciples of Marx. 

The fourth reason why workers turned to fascism en masse was the fear of violence. Thus, the workers’ organization of fascism grew and spread throughout Italy. The last general assembly of their labour organizations had about one million members. In parallel with the industrial workers, the peasantry was organizing. Between 20,000 and 30,000 organized peasants repeatedly marched in front of Mussolini. The fascists used the time of the anti-socialist struggle to organize their own armies. Each soldier takes an oath and submits to unconditional discipline. The fascist army has its own uniforms, its own rank, decorations, its own generals and officers, cavalry, airborne divisions, military police, courts, etc. Anyone who does not respond to mobilization is considered a deserter and is tried according to military law. The fascist army was organized by reservists and active Italian officers. Several active Italian generals played a leading role in it. 

 Coup d’état 

Thus fascism became independent across the board. It became independent of the capitalists, independent of the government, it grew beyond the existing state. Only one thing remained: to seize state power and take Italy into its own hands. Preparations for the revolution had begun in earnest. The communist threat was long gone, the socialists and communists were no longer threatening, they had become meek and docile. Despite this, the fascists continued their attacks. They occupied city halls, overthrew mayors, increasingly mobilized their troops and sent them to fight individual prefects.  

On the surface, it all seemed pointless. Why mobilize 20,000 men when it was often a minor dispute that could be easily resolved? These were armed manoeuvres of the fascist army. They were preparations for a coup d’état. It was necessary to see how the apparatus worked and how much resistance the government still faced. A month before the coup, a final attempt was made; the fascists began to occupy government offices. They seized the main civilian commissariat in Trident and occupied the headquarters of the regional government.  

The government surrendered and its fate was sealed. A few weeks later, overnight, the fascist army occupied all post offices, railroad stations, prefectures, police offices in almost every city in Italy, severed telegraph connections with Rome and began a three-way march toward the capital. The coup was entirely successful. Mussolini got his hands on the reins of Italy. 

Ideological content and goals 

What programme does fascism intend to bring to Italy’s political life? What is the ideological background of this great movement? What goals are pursued by the country’s new rulers? The rise of fascism itself reveals to us some of the basic ideas of the fascist movement. 
 
Militarism 

Fascism arose in the struggle against the Socialist Party, which opposed the war, belittled the Italian victory and demanded the punishment of many officers and generals. The Socialists incited the army to disobey its superiors and lowered its reputation. The fascists came to the army’s defence. For the fascists, the army is the noblest expression of Italian national life. The army, they claim, has awakened all the latent moral forces in the Italian nation and prepared it for a glorious future. It is in the spirit of the army that the entire nation must be reborn. Out of the world war should arise a brave and heroic Italy. The basis of all culture and all progress is the army. That is why fascists are militarists.  

Italian empire 

The fascist movement put up the most determined fight against the socialists, who wanted to deprive Italy of all the fruits of military victory. The fascists attacked [Francesco Saverio] Nitti (left-liberal politician, leader of the Italian Radical Party and prime minister during the height of the “red years” of 1919-1920) and Giolitti for their inability to defend Italy’s interests at international conferences. They unnecessarily gave up Rijeka, Dalmatia, Albania and made too many concessions to France and England. Thus, Italy squandered a great opportunity to expand its colonies. Italy was entitled to a share of German colonies in Africa and the Indian Ocean. In Asia Minor, Italy was completely cheated. Italy’s future lies in the Mediterranean, the Middle East and the Balkans. Italy must expand, must extend its power far beyond the borders of the peninsula. This is the foreign policy of fascism. 

Against centrism and bureaucracy                                                                             

Italy is one of the most centralist countries in Europe. Their constitution is modelled on the French constitution. The Roman government consolidates powerful authority in its hands. From the centre, multitudes of bureaucrats run the entire country. Even minor local issues are decided by Rome. A struggle against centrism has been going on in Italy for 50 years. The fascists have adopted as their programme the principle that the centralist state must be stripped of more than half of its previous activities. On September 20th of [1922] Mussolini gave a programmatic speech in Udine and declared on behalf of his party: “We want to deprive the state of all its economic activity. What remains is the police, to protect the honest from the attentions of thieves and criminals, what remains is teaching and education for new generations, what remains is the army, to guarantee the integrity of the fatherland, and what remains is foreign policy.” The government has just announced in parliament that the railroads, postal service and telegraph are to be outsourced to private companies. The railroads alone cost the country half a billion a year. 

Against liberalism 

Fascism does not mean leaving all other affairs of state to private individuals. The fascist party strongly opposes liberalism (understood as liberal capitalism). Fascists claim that liberalism is to blame for all the misfortunes that have befallen the Italian people over the past half century. For them, liberalism is the source of corruption and decay. The fascist coup represents the complete and final failure of Italy’s liberal parties. The issues that the state is abandoning have not yet been entrusted to anyone by the fascists. Their programme in this regard has not yet been fully developed. 

Statutory organization 

The fascists firmly and resolutely reject class struggle. They accuse socialists of breeding class egoism through class struggle. Today’s working class thinks only of the interests of its own stratum and forgets the interests of the whole. The class struggle has alienated the workers from their homeland and excluded them from the psychic community of the Italian people. The fascists want to replace the class struggle with an organization of all states. The state must recognize the organizations of the rank-and-file workers and give them a legal basis. Every stratum essential to national production must have legal representation. Negotiations and agreements between representatives of the productive states replace the class struggle. How the states are to organize themselves is a question on which the fascist programme does not yet have definite principles. Nor does the fascist programme yet say how the states will intervene in public administration. 

Cultural program 

Fascists accuse socialism and communism of materialism. They stress at every opportunity that the entire value of a nation lies in its psyche. A nation without ideals is not a nation, but a herd. The Socialist Party has educated a working class devoid of all mental values and humiliated it in its human dignity. Intellectual interests must be at the forefront of social life. Fascism has set itself the task of restoring Italian idealism. The greatness of a nation does not depend on its numbers, but on its ability to develop all its mental powers within itself. 

Attitude to religion 

Fascism does not like to fight against religion and the Church. The regulations of the fascist army even state that “the fascist militia serves God and the Italian homeland”. Every fascist who joins the party army must swear: “In the name of God and Italy, in the name of all who have fallen for the greatness of Italy, I swear to dedicate myself completely and forever to the good of Italy.” Mussolini ended his first speech in parliament with the words: “May God support me so that I may bring my difficult effort to a victorious conclusion.” 

Attitude toward the Catholic Church 

Fascism shows a friendly face towards the Catholic Church. Mussolini repeatedly spoke in parliament about the spiritual strength of Catholicism and stressed his respect for its cultural mission. As prime minister, he declared in parliament that “the government will protect the freedom of all religions, and above all the reigning Catholic religion.” Some circles in Italy believe that Mussolini will resolve the dispute between the Vatican and Italy. However, it would be a mistake to conclude from this that the Fascist Party is Catholic. The Fascists claim that their movement is also a religious movement; but their journals reflect a huge contradiction of various declarations with regard to religion. Their followers, for example, must adhere to the principle: “Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, hand for a hand, foot for a foot, wound for a wound, bruise for a bruise!”. Anyone who does not observe this rule against the enemy is placed among the “unclean”. Enthusiasm for the Catholic Church also serves nationalism. For fascists, the Church is an organization that has spread and is spreading the glory of Rome and Latin culture throughout the world and among all nations. If you erect a chapel of the Catholic Church in a distant country, you are erecting a monument to Rome and its culture. There is only one soul of fascism, and it is driven by only one thought and one force, and that is nationalism. 
 

This text appeared in Razpotja magazine (No. 49, 2022), and is published with the permission of the editors.  

 
Note from the translator – Nikodem Szczygłowski 

The Slovenian minority in Italy, living in what is now the province of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, but also in the areas of Primorska and Goriška, which today are already within the borders of the Republic of Slovenia, actually became the first victim of fascism in Europe as early as the mid-1920s. The contractual date for the beginning of the widespread repression against Slovenian citizens can be considered to be 13 July 1920, when fascist militias called the “Blackshirts” set fire to the Slovenian National House in the centre of Trieste. After Mussolini’s rise to power, Slovenians in Italy gradually lost almost all their civil rights – the Slovenian language was expunged from school, church and all forms of public life, Slovenians were forbidden to practice free professions and dismissed from state and local government offices, names and surnames were forcibly changed to Italian, and coercive measures ranging from beatings and kidnappings to murder were used against the unruly. Finally, there were concentration camps on karst hills (one of which operated, for example, at the famous tourist attraction, the Grotta Gigante near Trieste. The struggle of the Slovenians against fascism was most extensively described in his works – including ‘Oberdan Square’ – by Boris Pahor (26.08.1913-30.05.2022), a Slovenian writer from Trieste, with his experiences of harassment, forced conscription into the Italian army for the Libyan campaign, fascist Italian and Nazi German camps. 

fascism, history, italy, Mussolin